Coterie is a cadre of individuals united under a common purpose. At Coterie Chicago, you will find handmade goods created by a skilled artisan workforce committed to providing cutting-edge art, style, and accessories that enhance your life. Buying directly from the maker creates a heightened sense of community and puts a real value on your time and quality of life in a way that products made overseas or in a factory just cannot provide. Now, more than ever, buying products from local artists and makers puts you at the forefront of real, lasting economic and creative stimulus.

Support local artists, makers, musicians, craftspeople and businesses for building better, more stable communities.

Who is behind Coterie? These three organizers met while working together to bring you DEPART-ment.

Sarah Bortt has a history of re-purposing items, making items from scratch, instigating groups of people for art and activism, and  organizing pretty much anything she can get her hands on or her mind wrapped around from the time of her childhood.  Currently, she makes Hand Maid Soap, accessories from truck tire inner tubes, jewelry, skirts and sometimes sweet banjo and fiddle music.  She currently lives in southeastern Ohio in a trailer off the grid with kerosene lamps, a wood stove, no running water, and out of cell phone range with her three cats.

Janet Ecklebarger just loves to help organize things. She brings almost 20 years of making and organizing experience to Coterie. Her company, glean design, specializes in conversational accessories inspired by society’s discards.

Laurie Freivogel started her business Kiku Handmade after visiting DEPART-ment for the first time in March 2004. She was so inspired by the amazing goods and their creators that she bought a kiln and taught herself to fuse glass. Since 2004, Laurie has specialized in silkscreened fused glass, sews one-of-a-kind upcycled garments, makes knitting needles, and casts resin rings.